RESTORE Is Changing The Way Nursing Home And Rehab Patients Engage With Physical Therapy
RESTORE-Together allows nursing home residents to play games and interact live and virtual.
RESTORE-Together
RESTORE-Together is a new, virtual therapy platform that gives nursing home patients the ability to play skill-building games with loved ones online. The platform has helped seniors connect with family and friends during the isolation of the pandemic.
Eran Arden is the CEO and founder of RESTORE Skills. He and Darryl Pipkin, director of rehab at the Fulton Center for Rehabilitation, joined “City Lights” producer Summer Evans to talk about RESTORE.
RESTORE was originally created ten years ago under a different name to help students with special needs. “Two and a half years ago, we decided to shift the activity and focus on the adult market, and that’s when we founded RESTORE-Skills,” said Arden. He continued, “It’s the same concept, you gamify skill-building, you gamify therapy, you utilize the platform to engage patients and help the teams in the field to make sure the patients are engaged and maximizing their efforts.”
Once the pandemic hit in 2020, RESTORE tripled its business in nursing homes and rehab centers throughout the U.S. The games are accessible on any wireless device: iPads, tablets, laptops. No gaming system or controls are required. Patients can use any red, blue, or green object and connect via webcam to their device. The object is how they control the games, and it’s also wheelchair accessible.
Patients can even play against their family members virtually. “We realized giving patients and team members, OTs, PTs, speech therapists, those working in a facility, the ability to connect the family members to the loved ones at home, around a game, that’s creating motivation for them to practice,” said Arden.
Pipkin, who has used this platform with several of his patients, says it has been a great tool for getting patients excited about rehabilitation. “It’s therapeutic, but they’re having fun. They’re not thinking of it as a rope exercise, counting from 1-10. It’s the same concept, the same outcome, but they’re not thinking about how long they’re standing. They may go from standing from 30 seconds to 2 minutes, and that 2 minutes goes by so fast because they’re so engaged in the activity,” said Pipkin.
Patients can play games such as virtual slot machines, bingo, skiing, and much more. The patient’s activity is then tracked on the platform to showcase their progress.
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